Chapter 22 Sinners
Ryker’s POV
The Veil's shimmering energy pulsed, then settled, sealing off the mundane world with a soft, ethereal sigh. Malik's light, already dimming in the vastness of Requiem, pulled Amaya towards the heart of Salvation. My gaze lingered on her, on the way her shoulders slumped, then squared. A pharmacist, he'd said. Dispensing cough syrup and ibuprofen. What a monumental waste of raw, volatile power.
Her words echoed, "I don't want to be a wolf. I don't want to be anything that… that tears."
The pathetic plea clawed at a part of me I rarely acknowledged. Humanity. Zohar's great, fragile experiment. Always so afraid of what lurked beneath the pretty surface. So quick to deny their own fangs. But she had fangs. I'd seen them flash. A glimpse. A promise.
"Sometimes, doll, tearing is the only way to heal," I'd told her. A truth Saint Malik, with his gilded platitudes and eternal grace, would never speak. He wanted to make her a shepherd. Bathed in Zohar's fading light, leading lost lambs to… what? Another pasture where they could be picked off by wolves? This wasn't a world for lambs. This was Requiem. This was war.
I melted into the shadows of the ancient structures, letting the Veil absorb my form. Malik wouldn't like me hovering. Good. Let him stew. My presence, a constant burr under his meticulously ordered saddle, was part of the fun. He was already dragging her away, his pristine hand clamped around hers, like she was a stray puppy he'd deigned to rescue. He was such a predictable, sanctimonious prick.
"Harness the light within you," I mimicked under my breath, my voice a low growl. "Guide the lost to peace." Zohar's peace. The peace that had allowed my brother-in-spirit Whiro to tear him limb from limb. The peace that left the realms vulnerable, teetering on the brink of absolute chaos. No. Not peace. Survival.
My eyes, storm-gray and sharp, tracked Amaya's retreating form. She was a beacon. A dangerous, alluring, infuriating beacon. And not just for the hungry little lurker I'd consumed. She was a beacon for me. For Whiro. For anyone with even a shred of primal instinct.
Malik felt it too. The possessive edge in his voice. The way his angelic light flared when I got too close. The subtle, almost imperceptible shift in his body, placing himself between her and me. He claimed it was protection. I called it what it was: raw, instinctual jealousy. The virginal angel wanted her. The architect's golden boy, the saint, wanted the human with the kindred darkness. It was almost comical. Almost.
That darkness. The scent of it was still a primal hum in my blood. Not the vile, corrupted essence of the entity I'd swallowed. No. This was something else. A power born of pain. Of righteous fury. Of betrayal. She'd seen her parents' deaths. A child's trauma. But I recognized the chilling truth of it now. Precognition. A deep sight, born from human agony, refined by grief.
Zohar, in his infinite wisdom, created the Architect's path. A path of duty, of order, of divine love. But love, like light, could blind. It made him ignore the rot festering beneath his meticulously manicured gardens. It made him weak. And it will cost him everything. Fewer and fewer humans believe in god. Hell, even some have lost belief in the devil.
Whiro. My father. My creator. Born from a stillborn human soul, he saw the truth of existence: life and death, creation and destruction, an endless cycle of hunger and consumption. He had carved Acheron from the raw, chaotic energy of the Sundering. He thrived on the ugly truth. And Amaya? She had a piece of that truth inside her. A spark of it. A dark, beautiful echo.
The Sundering is something everyone who comes to Salvation must learn. The foundational myth detailing the falling out between Zohar and Whiro. They co-founded Salvation as a place of balance, but their bond was broken by a woman they both loved. Whiro's jealousy led him to embrace dark magic, which unleashed disasters upon Requiem and Earth. In the ensuing chaos, the woman vanished. Zohar chose his duty to restore order, while Whiro descended further into his lust for power. The conflict ended with a schism that split the realms: Zohar took Celeste, Whiro took Acheron, and Earth was left as a neutral, contested prize between them. Humanity, the fragile thing powerful beings fight over. I never really understood it until I encountered Amaya. Now, she just might give me a reason to spend more time on Earth.
Her snarky comeback, that spark of defiance, played again in my mind. "I'm pretty sure you just gave yourself indigestion." A laugh. A genuine, surprised laugh from me. Not the usual bark of amusement I reserved for the absurdity of the world. This was different. A jolt. A sudden, unexpected warmth in the cold, hollow space where my heart should have been.
She had bite. She had fire. She was raw, untamed. And she was going to be mine. Malik could preen and pontificate about light and truth. He could try to mold her into another docile lamb, another soldier for his rapidly crumbling, angelic order. But he wouldn't succeed. I knew her better than he ever could. I saw the wildness in her, the anger, the thirst for something beyond the tidy boxes Malik lived in.
He wanted to protect her. I wanted to unleash her.